Saturday, May 31, 2014

Staunton, May 31 – The events in
Abkhazia have a simple explanation, Yuliya Latynina says. “The unrecognized
republic lived on Moscow’s money, but now the money has run out.”As such, its “fate is the best illustration
of what happens to regions which fall into the zone of Russian influence.”

In a commentary in today’s “Novaya
gazeta,” Latynina says that Abkhazia had counte on receiving 12 billion Russian
rubles (400 million US dollars) this year but to date has received only two (65
million).That may be enough for the
republic’s president, but it isn’t for the Abkhazian people (novayagazeta.ru/columns/63837.html).

Earlier, Abkhazia was a wonderful
place, but the blessings it enjoyed have come to naught under the Kremlin,
Latynina says. Instead, there has been “collapse and destruction.” Agricultural
production has collapsed, tourism has as well, the forests have been cut down
with the food exported to Turkey.

Under Russia, there are no property
rights in Abkhazia at all. Instead, former field commanders are given the use
of land but not its ownership. They “take in 100 tourists and take 100 rubles
from each, and then give the government three kopeks,” Ankvab told the “Novaya”
commentator.

The only real source of income – and
Latynina recalls that Moscow excluded Abkhazia from making any money fromthe Sochi Olympiad – are subsidies from the
Russian government that are handed out by the government or more specifically
by its nominal head. The amounts of money have never been large, but stability
depended on the flow continuing.

No Abkhaz leader could behave
otherwise under the circumstances, and Ankvab like his predecessors – and successors
when they come – has had to play Moscow so as to keep himself or herself in
power and the situation stable because of course they are going to think “not
about the interests of Moscow but about the interests of Abkhazia.”

Latynina adds that she is “personally
completely certain that the Russian-Georgian war should have been launched in
May with Abkhazia and that the Abkha leadership did everything to prevent
precisely that scenario.”And that is “the
saddest lesson which one can extract from Abkhazia’s fate.”

“The Kremlin,” the Moscow
commentator says, “has done everything in order that there will not be any
money in Abkhazia apart from Russian subsidies.”

But when the economic crisis hit,
and Moscow had to economize, “the Kremlin simply decided” to save money by
cutting its funding for Abkhazia.The
money stream began to dry up.There was
still enough for Ankvab but not for the people.And that development allowed the opposition to gather thousands for a
meeting to demand that they and not he get the funds.

The way to understand all this,
Latynina concludes, is that Moscow “hooked a region on heroin and then didn’t
supply it.And this was still before
Ukraine and the future economic crisis.”She thus implies that if Moscow cuts back further in Abkhazia and
elsewhere, it will face even more troubles ahead.

Staunton, May 31 – Official statistics
show that health care services in Russia’s Pskov oblast which adjoins Estonia
and Latvia have deteriorated rapidly in recent years to the point of crisis,
according to a report by Lev Shlosberg, a Yabloko party member of the oblast
legislative assembly.

In a presentation to oblast legislators,
he said the number of hospital beds per 100,000 residents had fallen from 105.5
in 2008 to 98.9 in 2012 and the number of beds for children had declined from
more than 300 to 263 over the same period. Polls show that 54 percent of residents
are upset and blame the government for inaction (sobkorr.ru/news/53884AD367926.html).

The “modernization” of the health
care system that oblast officials have talked about and that involves the
creation of inter-regional health centers, Shlosberg said, has in fact made the
situation worse. The number of doctors in district hospitals has fallen, and
now in the 14 such hospitals, there are fewer than 25 doctors.

The new “inter-regional” centers
that the oblast officials are so proud of not only do not meet basic treatment
standards but also lack the legal and financial status of hospitals.Moreover, both doctors and patients have to
go much further to give or receive treatment, leading to greater expense and a
reduction in access.

The Yabloko party leader called for
increasing spending on health care in Pskov oblast and also for attracting more
medical personnel to the region by offering to pay the educational expenses of
those who would upon graduation agree to serve in Pskov’s hospitals or other
medical centers.

The situation with regard to health
care in Pskov Oblast was notorious under the previous LDPR governor who closed
drug stores and restricted public transportation to save money and thus sent
the death rate among diabetics who often could not get insulin as a result
soaring far above the all-Russian average and sent life expectancy figures
plummeting.

Indeed, as a result of his tenure,
the difference in life expectancies between Pskov oblast and the Tartu county
of Estonia was the largest of any two contiguous territories in the world.Shlosberg’s report shows that the situation has
not improved – and may even be set to deteriorate further.

Staunton, May 31 – Kazakhstan
President Nursultan Nazarbayev said this week that Armenia could join the
Eurasian Union only as a country with the borders recognized by the United
Nations, a statement that clearly shocked Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan by
suggesting that the union won’t support his claims on Karabakh or other
portions of Azerbaijan.

Those who witnessed Sargsyan’s reaction
to Nazarbayev’s statement that Armenia would have to do so in order to avoid
offending Baku, “assert that to put it mildly, these were not the happiest
moments in the life” of the Armenian president, according to Russian journalist
and commentator Arkady Dubnov (echo.msk.ru/blog/dubnov/1330830-echo/).

Sargsyan after hearing this
declaration asked for “two or three days” to find “a mutually acceptable”
resolution so that he will be able to sign an agreement on June 15 about
Armenia’s accession to the Eurasian Economic Community.That won’t be easy, but history suggests, it
isn’t impossible.

Sergey Manasaryan, Armenia’s deputy
foreign minister, told his country’s parliament that despite what Nazarbayev
had said, “the remaining disagreements” between Armenia and the Eurasian
Economic Community’s other members “do not bear a conceptual character.”Yerevan has signed other agreements where its
trans-border claims are left unspoken.

Armenia’s dependence on Moscow for
military and energy security is so great, and Moscow’s interest in expanding
the Customs and Eurasian Union so large, that Yerevan will probably sign the
accession documents as planned with the border issue allowed to remain implicit
rather than become explicit.

But there are three aspects of what
may seem to some as a diplomatic tempest in a teapot worth mentioning. First,
this is a clear demonstration that the Eurasian Economic Community is an “exclusively”
economic union. That is how Kazakhstan views it, but it is not how Russia and
Armenia do. And thus this highlights how weak and divided the new grouping is
likely to be.

Second, if this is handled as it is
likely to be, by silence rather than a statement, Moscow will show itself once
again in the bind that has dictated much of its approach over the last two
decades: it views Azerbaijan as the prize but is glad to have Armenia as a means
of promoting instability in the South Caucasus in the meantime, a position that
is worrisome in both capitals.

And third, it makes more likely that
Yerevan will seek to promote independence for Karabakh and possibly the
adjoining occupied territories rather than seek to annex them as some Armenians
would like.That could further complicate
the situation and possibly prompt Baku to take more dramatic actions in
response.

Staunton, May 31 – In a new book,
educational theorist Anatoly Yermolin suggests that there are ways for Russian parents
to raise “independent, self-sufficient and harmoniously developed children” who
could become the basis for “the flourishing of the state” despite the authoritarianism
and even totalitarianism round them.

As
the educator notes, “there is a great deal of talk in [Russia’s] schools about
the self-administration of children, but the number of real cases when
administrative authority is delegated to children can be counted on one hand.”
Instead, in many schools, “the dictatorship of the director and the teachers remains
the main form of administration.”

And
that is “not bad ... if you do not know how to work any other way” and if you
don’t care about what those children will turn out to be or about the society
they will help create.

“Director-monarchs
– such a term exists in contemporary management theory – are typically very
effective leaders. In the schools they head work strong teachers, there are
almost no problems with discipline and the graduates receive good knowledge and
get into higher educational institutions.”

But
despite that, it is clear that “the future life effectiveness of a young person”
depends not just on what he or she knows but how he or she has acquired it and
how he or she has learned to interact both with superiors and with equals.

“Typically,” Yermolin says, “in schools with an
authoritarian regime of administration, the teachers quite capably imitate
pupil self-administration.Various
student organs are set up, an enormous quantity of meetings is held, but such
work very often occurs exclusively on the basis of the initiative of adults.”

The
opinions of the children are taken into account “if they correspond with the
positions of the teachers,” he writes, with “the director monarchs consciously
preventing the development of true self-administration and self-organization of
the pupils.” And for many children, such arrangements and those who make them
may be even quite popular.

But
“the usefulness of ‘monarchs’ under conditions of contemporary economics is
already under doubt,” Yermolin says, because “such an administrator prevents
pupil self-administration not because he is evil but because his system of
management does not accept democratic innovations.”

The tragedy is
that if such administrators are forced to introduce more democratic structures,
the latter may are likely to fail or even backfire because such effective
managers don’t believe in them.In that
situation, parents need to intervene and promote pupil administration because
otherwise the rising generation won’t have the values needed for Russia to
flourish.

Doing so won’t be easy because the
problems he identifies in Russian schools now are the problems of Russia as a
whole, a country in which authoritarian leaders may feel compelled to offer
imitation democracy but feel equally justified in subverting any chance that
children or adults will be able to make decisions and thus take control of
their own lives.